“Kansas: its interior and exterior life; including a full view of its settlement, political history, social life, climate soil, productions, scenery, etc. (1856) (hereinafter ‘interior and exterior’) described in vivid detail the social and political situation in Bleeding Kansas up through 1856. Kansas’ first First Lady Sara Robinson described therein the violence that ravaged the territory, the corrupt and fraudulently elected territorial legislature, Governor Wilson Shannon’s recognition of that ‘bogus’ legislative body, his predisposition toward and sympathy for the proslavery faction, the Wakarusa War, Sheriff Samuel Jones’s sack of Lawrence, the Topeka Constitutional Convention, her husband’s election as ‘governor’ by free-state partisans, and his subsequent arrest and incarceration. At the time, some considered Robinson’s book second only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in importance to the anti-slavery cause.” I have quoted the above from the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library online.
The book was considered "epoch making" for its time, per Daughters of the American Revolution magazine (public domain ed.) (1912).
The amazing thing about interior and exterior was the author’s urgent moral voice. Her loud and clear voice. She and the New England Emigrant Aid Society came to Kansas upon passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act in 1854 to settle here and vote on whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Until then Missouri’s western border was the western boundary of the United States. She was determined that slavery be stopped at the Missouri line, and not permitted to migrate westward as new states were admitted to the union, augmenting the slavers’ unjust stranglehold on the Senate and the Electoral College. She was determined that slavery be confined to Dixie, where she supposed it would eventually suffocate, if it’s power in Washington were ended.
Although it must be at least something like the best history of the time and place, like many of the best histories, it shaves corners that do not serve the author’s ends.
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I published a diary about the Pottawatomie Massacre, one of the major events of the period, when John Brown and his band drug five non-resisting pro-slavery settlers from their cabins in front of their wives and children and dismembered them with broadswords. Here —memorializing a riverboat trip from St. Louis to Kansas City— is Robinson’s only oblique mention of it: “The last day or two of the trip on the Missouri river rumors of war became more frequent. Inflammatory extras were thrown upon the boats at different landings. People at Lexington, and other points along the river, were much excited, and preparing for a new invasion. The extras stated the murder of eight pro-slavery men, by the abolitionists, and the cruel mutilation of their bodies; the death of the United States Marshal, of H. C. Pate, and J. McGee. Deeds of blood and violence, of which they were hourly guilty, were charged upon the free-state men. The following is a sample of the incendiary extras which flew through the border counties: ‘Murder is the watchword and midnight deed of a scattered and scouting band of abolitionists, who had courage only to fly from the face of a wronged and insulted people, when met at their own solicitation. Men, peaceable and quiet, cannot travel on the public roads of Kansas, without being caught, searched, imprisoned, and their lives, perhaps, taken. No Southerner dare venture alone and unarmed on her roads!’ Such were the false statements made to arouse the passions of the border men.”
The diary linked above reports the Pottawatomie massacre as accurately as possible. Robinson’s labored mischaracterization and obfuscation was in service of abolitionism.
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I wrote a later diary about the Battle of Black Jack, in the course of which deputy U.S. Marshall “Pate approached Brown under a flag of truce to negotiate; however, Brown demanded his company’s unconditional surrender. When Pate asked for fifteen minutes, presumably to talk it over with his men, Brown drew his revolver, and his followers drew a bead on Pate with their rifles.
“‘You can’t do this!’ Pate cried. ‘I’m under a white flag. You’re violating the articles of war!’
“’You are my prisoner,’ Brown simply replied, the barrel of his pistol speaking volumes about his intent.
”’I had no alternative, but to submit or be shot.’ Pate commented subsequently.”
Robinson’s account of the Battle of Black Jack: After some exchange of fire, Pate approached with a white flag “and surrendered unconditionally.” She said that Pate “acknowledged the bravery of Capt. Brown, for he said Capt. Brown rode about them sword in hand, and commanded a surrender, and they were obliged to make it.”
But really… Brown was not mounted during the Battle of Black Jack. He held a pistol on Pate and not a sword. And Pate was his hostage when he surrendered. Maybe she was thinking of Pottawatomie when she made mention of the sword.
The above… more labored mischaracterization and obfuscation in service of abolitionism.
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One really saturating dimension of reading history is acquiring some texture concerning what you have read before. In a third diary I wrote about General Order No. 11. In that diary I noted this concerning one couple killed when General Order No. 11 was executed:
“I have found it interesting that when their belongings were sold, their former slaves bought some things.“
So I found the following interesting, as well:
“There was another woman, native-born, who came to the house, occasionally, at the time it was passing into new hands. She owned one of the colored ‘boys,’ who was hired in the hotel. She came to make some arrangement with the new proprietor. She was a maiden lady, considerably on the down-hill side of life, large, portly, with most expressionless face, but she had ‘raised’ the ‘boy,’ and she ‘wanted him treated kindly.’ She said, ‘she thought she would let him have what wages he made through the summer.’ When the proprietor, quite harshly, said, ‘it did not do to treat negroes well,’ she said ‘she had never struck the boy a blow in her life, an she would have him well treated; he could stay a month, and if he did not like he could leave.’
“In a conversation with a little daughter of the former proprietor, she said, ‘Where are you from?’
“’Massachusetts.’
“’What county is that in?’
“’Massachusetts is a state,’ timidly replied the sensitive girl, not liking to show any superiority of knowledge.
“’Yes, I know that; but what county is it in?’
“There seemed to be a confusion of ideas. She knew she lived in Jackson County, and to her, probably, that comprised all Missouri. As far as native intelligence went, the colored boy was her superior, and she evidently regarded him with the same affection she would a white boy whom she had reared.”
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interior and exterior should be read by persons interested in the history of the time and place, the Civil War, American history, women’s studies, or liberation struggles. Find it at Amazon, or link here to read it online.